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Delivered before the 



DELTA PHI AND ATHENIAN LITERARY 



SOCIETIES OF NEWARK COLLEGE. 



B Y 



THOMAS E. BOND, Jr. M.D 



September 21, 1840, 



BALTIMORE: 

WOODS & CRANE, PRINTERS 



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.2 



ADDRESS 



GENTLEMEN OF THE DELTA PHI 

AND ATHENIAN LITERARY SOCIETIES :— 

To you I am indebted for the invitation that procures me 
the honour of addressing this audience. To you, therefore, 
my thanks are due, and to you I sincerely offer them. 

The letter by which your request was conveyed to me, 
contained no common place compliments. As I highly ap- 
prove, I will endeavour to imitate your disregard of unmean- 
ing forms, and will therefore spare you the usual enumeration 
of your speaker's disqualifications for the trust you have com- 
mitted to him. 

You have called me here in the hope that I might be useful 
to you. You do not therefore expect me to aim at your mere 
amusement. Indeed, what is usually meant by that word, de- 
serves no place in a man's history after he has once put away 
childish things. The object of amusement is to extract the 
sting from idleness, and render sloth supportable. Its nature 
is to substitute attention for reflection, and thus to cheat the 
immortal mind of its only proper and nutritious food, which 
is the acquirement of truth. 

Dissipation has been defined to be the art of forgetting God ! 
Amusement may be regarded with equal truth, as the art of 
starving the mind. 

Believe me, gentlemen, I feel that it is no light matter to be 
your speaker to-day. I know the softening influence of scenes 
like these, and I know how readily at such times, permanent 
impressions may be stamped upon the heart. 

I highly value the opportunity you have given me, of sow- 
ing here, the fruitful seed of thought. That the seed sown be 
pure and good, and that you receive and cherish it, may one 



day be of great importance to you, and to them that love you, 
and even to the community in which you are to live. 

I have found it difficult to select from the number of very 
interesting subjects that have presented themselves to my 
mind in view of this occasion, one more than others, suitable 
for the theme of the few remarks I am expected to make. 

When I sat down to review the results of my expe- 
rience and observation, in hope to draw from these sources, 
however limited, something that might be useful to you, 
imagination transported me to this hall. I stood before this 
audience. I saw these young men, the observed of all 
observers. The feelings, the dreams, and the sober realities 
of the occasion, rushed upon my mind with all the force of indi- 
viduality, and in a moment I lived through all the particulars 
of this hour. 

A college commencement has always been an affect- 
ing scene to me. Whoever looks deeper than the surface 
of things will find here, food for much reflection, and will 
meet demands for all the sympathies of his nature. How 
beautiful and tender are the emotions suggested by the 
mother's look of complete, unsuspecting happiness, as she 
gazes upon her manly boy ! How do the deep fountains of 
affection, well up in unison with the almost unrestrained 
fondness of the sister, whose eyes sparkling with pride and 
gladness, are rivetted upon a brother's form ! How many 
stern truths, and how much painful experience are shadowed 
forth in the grave, and anxious countenance of the father, 
whose careful thoughts, withdrawing themselves from the 
present, are busily anticipating the future history of his son ? 
And then how strongly do the feelings of these respected men, 
(the Faculty) claim our regard and appeal to our sympathies. 
Perhaps among all the deep and varied emotions that stir 
in the bosoms of an audience like this, none are more ardent 
or more tender than those which struggle for utterance in the 
heart of the instructor. 

The preceptor loves his pupil. Perhaps he has been em- 
ployed for years in watching the development of that young 
mind, and in laboring to promote its vigorous and healthy 



expansion. He has anxiously sought to give those growing 
energies a direction and an impetus that might carry his 
charge over the breakers, and launch him safely upon the 
broad sea of life. 

Of the true character of the pupil, so far as his character 
may be formed, the teacher only, of all interested in his wel- 
fare, has had opportunity to form a correct opinion, and of 
the probable course and destiny of the pupil, the teacher only 
can form a rational conjecture. Reluctantly he leads his 
charge to the threshold of active life, and commits him to its 
busy scenes. But his interest does not end here. The 
Spartan mother equipped her son and led him to the battle, 
then left him to the chances of the conflict. But from some 
near eminence she still watched the ebb and flow of victory, 
and amidst the rush of combatants ever kept her eye upon the 
white plume her own hands had placed in the helmet of her 
boy. So from the retirement of these halls, these friends of 
your youth will long mark yonr career amidst the perils and 
the high ennobling duties of life, and long as you bear unsul- 
lied on your brow, the pure white plume of virtue they have 
fastened there, so long will they feel honoured by your deeds, 
and reckon themselves rewarded for their cares. 

The departure of a gallant ship for a distant shore is attend- 
ed with thrilling interest. Unconsciously we invest the beau- 
tiful machine with the attributes of life, and as she rides joy- 
ously upon the gently heaving bosom of the waters, we feel 
an almost irrepressible desire to warn the unsuspecting bark 
of the treachery that lurks beneath those laughing waves. 
We sadly anticipate her long and lonely struggles with the 
sea ; her fierce conflicts with the tempest, and her secret 
dangers in the sunken rock or unsuspected shore. 

If we permit ourselves to be thus interested in a striking 
symbol, how should the reality affect us ? The starting ship 
is but an emblem of youth— of these youth. Just accoutred 
for the voyage of life, to-day some of you launch upon the 
open waters. How are you provided for the way? Have 
you any determined port in prospect ? Have you carefully 
studied the charts that experienced navigators have pre- 



pared ? Are you ready for the ordinary dangers and even 
the possible accidents of the voyage ? Or will you carelessly 
spread your canvass to every wooing breeze; loiter upon 
every pleasant shore, and drift unresistingly with every cur- 
rent? Do you expect to escape without chart or compass or 
pilot, the dangers against which others have found it neces- 
sary to guard most anxiously, and to reach by accident the 
haven that others have gained only by great exertion ? 

The ship is but a very imperfect type of man. She may 
return from her voyage to the place whence she departed. 
Battered by the waves and worn by the winds she may 
at length make her way back to port. Her damage may be 
repaired and experience may enable her to escape in a second 
voyage, the errors and the dangers of the first. It is not 
thus with man. His departure is a final one. He never can 
retrace his course. He makes but one voyage. 

Mr. Coleridge has remarked, that "truths of all others the 
most awful and interesting are too often considered as so 
true, that they lose all the power of truth and lie bed-ridden 
in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most de- 
spised and exploded errors." 

Among these truths so universally admitted, and so little 
regarded by the mass of men, are those fundamental ones 
that relate to the nature and the object of life. There are 
but few men and very few young men who seek to under- 
stand their own being ; its mode, its laws, its object and its 
destiny. 

Most persons begin life without any determined aim or 
settled principles of action. They throw themselves heed- 
lessly into the stream, careless of the tendency of the cur- 
rent ; amuse themselves with bubbles, while they are rapidly 
hurried onward, and only put out their energies so far as may 
be necessary to keep pleasantly afloat. 

The consequences of this general recklessness are every 
where visible in the unhappiness and the degradation of man. 

If we could separate ourselves from all the associations 
that have grown up with us, and divesting ourselves of all 
prejudice, look upon society as for the first time, and make 



up our judgment of things from facts alone. We should 
hardly persuade ourselves of the natural sanity of our race. 
How could the existence of reason be inferred from life 
perseveringly and confessedly irrational? 

When we look out upon the world, we see man possessed 
of wonderful powers. We find him exerting those powers 
to subdue all things under him, and to press all other forces into 
his service. We see him every where working with hercu- 
lean strength and energy. Here tearing up the bowels of 
the earth, and there plunging into the dark caverns of the sea ; 
here bridging the ocean with fleets, and there hewing his 
pathway through the rock-ribbed mountain. Here one 
gathers a little down from the nest of a worm and weaves it 
into a bark to bear him above the clouds, and there another 
harnesses the fire to his chariot and outstrips the wind in his 
flight. Every where we meet with evidences of ingenuity, 
of power, of indefatigable industry, but at the same time all 
these appear in most instances to be directed by the wildest 
spirit of inconsistency. 

When we inquire into the end of all this labour ; when we 
ask, why do those busy crowds toil thus 'I What rest results 
from all this restlessness 1 What ease from all this pain ? 
what ultimate good from all this exertion ? And what profit 
has man for all his labour ? Then we learn that all is vani- 
ty ; a mere waste of existence ; and that man with all his 
endowments, is a most ingenious and industrious madman. 

This picture is dark, but its shades deepen fearfully when 
we reflect that for all this perversion of life, man is respon- 
sible. He is a madman without the impunity of madness. 
He is a voluntary madman and his madness is guilt. 

If you think this view of life, as the many live, is fanciful 
or exaggerated, hear the affecting confession of the celebrated 
Chesterfield, when about to retire from the gay and busy 
scenes in which he had been so distinguished an actor. — In 
the bitterness of disappointment he declares "when I reflect 
upon what I have seen, what I have heard, and what I have 
done, I can hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous 
hurry, and bustle, and pleasure of the world had any reality. 



8 

But I look upon all that is past as one of those romantic 
dreams which opium commonly occasions, and I by no 
means desire to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the 
fugitive dream." 

It is strange that men who exercise the utmost prudence 
and sagacity with regard to the external affairs of life, do 
not think it necessary to employ even common sense in the 
management of the vast concerns of their own spiritual na- 
ture. No man would undertake the direction of an intricate 
machine, unless he had first acquainted himself with its na- 
ture and the purposes intended to be accomplished by it. 
Yet no mechanism is so intricate as the human mind ; no- 
thing is so hard to understand as the maman soul. The 
mighty engine within us will work on. Its progress may 
not be hindered for a moment. Whether we trouble ourselves 
to manage it or not, it still drives us onward with fearful 
speed. 

The wise Constructor of the machine has not been unmind- 
ful of it. The same great Being who marked out a path- 
way for the sun, and "cut channels for the rivers among 
the rocks," has appointed a course for the human soul. He 
has given reason to direct its movements in the way he has 
assigned, but man wantonly blindfolds the engineer and aban- 
dons the engine to its own wild way. Surely the fabled 
Phaeton who presumptuously undertook to guide the sun on 
his course, was but a faint type of Him who gives up his 
only treasure to be the sport of blind unbridled passion. 

Life is a most precious gift. Men are found to cling to 
it though doomed to wear it out in dreary solitude or unre- 
lenting pain, — and few, perhaps none, have voluntary relin- 
quished it. The arm of the suicide has been nerved, not by 
desire for extinction, but by the vain hope of changing his 
mode of being for the better. 

Like other possessions, however, life varies in value with 
circumstances. It is true that it has an absolute or natural 
value which depends upon instinct, and is judged of by indi- 
vidual selfishness. Thus if a heathen ignorant of future ac- 
countability, and unconnected with society by ties of kin- 



dred or friendship, was afflicted with continual pain without 
hope of remedy or mitigation, he would still love his life, and 
would estimate it more highly then he would that of the 
most happy and useful of his species. In the sense here in- 
dicated the lives of all men in all ages are equally important, 
and perhaps I might say, the lives of all brutes too, for they 
seem to appreciate existence as highly as we do. 

But there is another and a far more correct method of 
estimating the value of life than by our instinctive desire to 
live. 

If we have been born into this world merely for the pur- 
pose of being happy in it, then that life is most valuable 
which by its length or other circumstances secures to the 
possessor the greatest amount of enjoyment. If on the 
contrary, life is a mere infliction of misery, without any ulti- 
mate end or object, then it is negatively valuable in propor- 
tion to its brevity or other circumstances belonging to it, that 
tend to diminish its amount of suffering. If neither of these 
suppositions be true ; if man is placed upon this earth neither 
for the purpose of being happy here, nor to the end that he 
may suffer, but if this life be preliminary to another and far 
more important mode of existence, and if the design of our 
present being be to secure our future happiness, then life is 
most valuable when had under circumstances most favour- 
able to the accomplishment of the end desired. 

The christian religion teaches that immediate happiness is 
not the end of our being. It shows that in our present con- 
dition we cannot be truly happy, and it declares the true 
business of life to be the preparation of our moral nature for 
happiness. It teaches us, too, that this world is a vast theatre 
where good and evil are struggling for the mastery. It shows 
us that we cannot be neutrals in the conflict, but that while 
we live we must swell the ranks of evil, and war against our 
race, or we must employ our energies <in the glorious work 
of the regeneration of man. It narrows down the great 
duties of spirtual life to these two, to seek by all the means 
God has given us to restore our own moral nature, and to 
aid in the restoration of that of our fellow men. 
2 



10 

If these be the true pursuits of life, and if life be valuable 
in proportion to the opportunities it affords for the accom- 
plishment of these ends, then it is far more valuable now than 
it has ever been ; for the man who is blessed with life, and 
especially with young life now, has received more in the gift 
of his being, than was bestowed in the boon of existence upon 
any who have preceded him. 

If the duration of life be calculated upon correct principles, 
U will be found that our lives are very much protracted, 
even beyond the term of antediluvian longevity. We live 
longer, for we live more than the men before the flood. The 
revolutions of the ball on which we tread, together with the 
periodical indications of the grand horology of heaven, serve as 
valuable remembrancers of the lapse of the hours to which our 
physical structure is limited. They serve to measure the rate 
at which the animal machine runs down ; to reckon the breath- 
ings and the pulsations by which we are less of life. But 
the soul has no such limits. When the eye shall cease to 
watch the sunlight and the shadows, and the ear shall be deaf 
to the iron voice that peals the knell of hours, the spirit shall 
yet endure with existence unabated by subtracted time. Its 
duration must not be measured by the daily journeying of 
worlds to dissolution, but by the number and importance of 
the acts performed by the intelligence. 

This we hold to be the true method of computation in 
man's moral arithmetic ; and if it be true, it is an animating 
reflection that however short may be the life of our earthly 
nature, we have it in our power to live long in the operations 
of our spirits. 

The grand instrument by which the purposes of life are 
to be accomplished, is knowledge — without this, man is pow- 
erless for good. But by knowledge we do not mean the 
mere memory of facts. To be acquainted with the deeds 
and opinions of men, or with the laws of God's physi- 
cal creation, or with the many languages of the babbling 
earth — all this is only learning — nor by knowledge do we 
mean the ability to apply this learning to the purposes of 
man's comfort or the increase of his strength. This is only 
science — knowledge is something more than all this. It is 






11 

acquired truth. It has to do not only with man's intelligence, 
but with his moral nature. It is for the acquisition of such 
knowledge as this, that learning and science are proper means, 
and unless they are applied to this purpose, these acquire- 
ments are worse than useless. 

In the present day, knowledge is more generally diffused 
than it has ever been before, and the facilities for acquiring 
and for propagating it, are infinitely greater than any other 
generation has enjoyed. Hence you enter upon life with 
greater advantages, and consequently with greater responsi- 
bilities than any who have lived before you have enjoyed 
and borne. 

You may have the benefit of the observation and expe- 
rience of the generations that have lived before you. Nations 
have run through all the details of their history, to teach you 
knowledge of men. Millions have perished in war, to teach 
you the value of peace. Millions more have been destroyed 
by luxury and licentiousness, to demonstrate to you the neces- 
sity of temperance. Every receding age has left for you, its 
patterns to imitate and its examples to deter. Many have 
watched the workings of their own hearts and transcribed 
for you the biography of their own minds. The laws, the 
passions, and the habits of the human soul, are exhibited to 
you in the recorded acts of all manner of men, under all man- 
ner of circumstances. Time has been carefully taking moulds 
of human character that you may observe and learn. Minds 
of the first order have treasured up for you the elements of learn- 
ing and science. Many have devoted tedious years to the de- 
monstration of a few mathematical problems and physical 
truths, the aggregate of which you may obtain almost without 
effort. The wisest and the best, as well as the most ignorant 
and the worst, have in their labour and in their sloth, their vir- 
tue and their vice, been unconsciously living for you. In the 
history of the past you have a chart of the future — improv- 
ed and amended from age to age. Almost as soon as you 
enter upon active life, you may come into possession of an 
inheritance of information gathered together by immense 
toil and patience and suffering. Young heirs are apt to for- 



12 

get the slow and laborious process by which estates are 
accumulated and to underrate the value of property which 
has cost them nothing. So we are prone to think lightly of 
the intellectual and moral legacy bequeathed us by our fore- 
fathers, and we often forget, that truths we learn easily, 
were originally obtained only by intense and fatiguing 
application. 

When we carelessly consult the table of logarithms, we 
seldom remember how much we owe to the protracted labours 
of Napier. Yet the facility of calculation we enjoy was 
unknown to the best mathematicians that preceded him, 
and his powerful mind long grappled with difficulties that 
all had failed to overcome before he possessed himself of the 
secret which we may learn in an hour. 

For thousands of years astronomers had watched the 
heavens. Night after night they had gazed into the starry 
arch, and noted the phenomena of siderial motion. Genius 
and patience and riches had long been lavished in endeavours 
to learn the laws by which the planetary revolutions are 
controlled, But genius and patience and riches failed to 
acquire the truth, until Copernicus and Newton read the 
secret of the skies ; and now a child may learn from a toy 
book the truths so diligently sought and so long unknown. 

In almost every department of science, similar advantages 
are your birth-right. So great is the difference between 
learning and being taught, that you may acquire more infor- 
mation in a day, than the most diligent student could once 
have learned in the most protracted life-time. 

The philosophy of Lord Bacon has added vastly to the 
real value of life. That great man created the character of 
the remarkable age in which we live, an age which will not 
be succeeded by another. For whatever continuance of years 
may be allotted to the world's duration, there never can be 
another great era in the history of the human mind. Suc- 
ceeding generations can but carry out the great principles of 
action already established in the prevalent philosophy of the 
Anglo Saxon race. 



13 

The philosophy of Bacon has been called the philosophy of 
fruit! Plato only taught his followers to dream; Epitetus 
taught his to suffer; Bacon taught men to act. The disciples 
of Plato took refuge in fancy from the painful realities of life. 
The stoic sullenly endured them. Bacon bade man stretch 
forth his hand and change them. 

Mr. Macaulay thus strikingly compares the poverty of the 
ancient with the riches of the modern philosophy. "Suppose 
that Justinian when he closed the schools of Athens, had called 
on the last few sages who still haunted the portico, and lingered 
round the ancient plane trees, to show their title to public 
veneration. Suppose that he had said 'a thousand years have 
elapsed since in this city, Socrates posed Protagoras and 
Hippias ; during these thousand years, a large proportion of 
the ablest men of every generation, has been employed in 
constant efforts to bring to perfection the philosophy which 
you teach : that philosophy has been munificently patronized 
by the powerful ; its professors have been held in the highest 
esteem by the public ; it has drawn to itself almost all the 
sap and vigour of the human intellect ; and what has it effect- 
ed? What profitable truth has it taught us which we should 
not equally have known without it 1 What has it enabled us 
to do which we should not have been equally able to do with- 
out it V Such questions we suspect would have puzzled Sim- 
plicius and Isidore. Ask a follower of Bacon what his 
philosophy has effected for mankind, and his answer is ready. 
It has lengthened life ; it has mitigated pain ; it has extin- 
guished diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it 
has given new securities to the mariner ; it has furnished new 
arms to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries 
with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; it has guided 
the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth ; it has 
lighted up the night with the splendor of day; it has extended 
the range of the human vision ; it has multiplied the power of 
the human muscles; it has accelerated motion; it has annihi- 
lated distance; it has facilitated intercourse; it has enabled 
man to descend to the depths of the sea ; to soar into the air ; 
to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth. 



14 

These are but a part of its fruits, and of its first fruits. For 
it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained 
it, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point 
which yesterday was invisible, is its goal to-day, and will be 
its starting post to-morrow." 

Young Gentlemen — The fruits of this philosophy so far as 
they are yet matured are yours. You may gather them in the 
multiplied comforts of life — in all the enjoyments of the civi- 
lized mind — in the abundance of knowledge — in the ease of 
acquiring it — in the means of wielding it to purpose. A man's 
observation once was limited to the range of his vision, and 
his influence was scarcely felt beyond the sound of his voice. 
Your observation scans the world and your power over your 
fellow-men is no longer limited by the barriers that once shut 
in communities. You may communicate at one and the 
same time with millions speaking different tongues. Within a 
few days of their birth your thoughts may be influencing the 
inhabitants of the four quarters of the globe. An able article 
in a popular newspaper may operate powerfully upon the 
minds and destinies of men separated by the roll of oceans, 
and severed by language and religion: and the writer 
without leaving his closet, may do more in an hour, than 
Methuselah could have accomplished had he devoted his long 
slow life to the purpose. 

It is not necessary now that a man shall occupy a con- 
spicuous station in society in order to influence the multitude. 
Through the press, every man fitted to lead, has access to the 
crowds that follow. "The author's eye may never flash; 
his voice may not thunder ; or his arm bear the avenging 
sword, yet the silent influence of his pen, like that of the moon 
upon the tumultuous sea, may be powerfully exerted to arouse 
the sleeping waves of human passion, or to lull them into 
peace." 

Gentlemen — The modern facilities for the diffusion of thought 
are a very important part of your inheritance of power. The 
pen is a far more powerful instrument than the sword, and you 
should consider it a sacred duty to prepare yourselves to use 
it for the benefit of mankind. 



15 



You inherit from your fathers, another legacy that adds a 
value to your life which even civilization could not give. You 
are born free ! You tread the earth with the consciousness 
that you have no superior but God. To Him only must you 
render homage, from Him only you need to solicit favour. 
You hold this noble country by a grant from the Creator's 
hand. He gave it to your fathers : you are his immediate 
tenants. He intends this country for his model land. Here 
he designs to exemplify the practicability of the principles he 
has laid down for man's moral and political government. 
Upon the heights of our majestic mountains he has lighted a 
beacon for the guidance of the nations, and he wills that every 
river that rolls through our valleys, and every wave that 
recedes from our boundless coast, shall bear away to other 
lands, the knowledge of a gospel that has power to renovate 
the soul and free the man. It has pleased God to make our 
country the nucleus of a free world. He has posted us in the 
Thermopylae of moral action. Even now our example and 
our efforts have sapped the foundations of ignorance, and 
superstition, and wrong, and every day popular opinion is 
fixing its powerful lever more securely beneath the tottering 
structures. The stone from the mountain has smitten the feet 
of clay, and iron tyranny staggers to its fall. The heart of 
the freeman beats high in the opening prospect of a liberated 
world, and the christian, reading in the universal shaking of 
the nations the accomplishment of prophetic vision, bends all 
his energies to penetrate the rapidly hastening events, by 
which pure and undefiled religion shall be triumphantly estab- 
lished in the earth. 

Gentlemen — When the shout of a ransomed world shall go 
up to heaven, shall ours be the joy to have stood in the front 
of the army of liberation ? That post of honour is ours, will 
we retain it ? Will we feel the preservation of our civil and 
religious liberty to be a sacred obligation 'I Will we hold our 
institutions as trustees for mankind 1 If we will, there is but 
one possible mode of preservation. We must imbue the 
minds of the great active mass with sound religious princi- 
ples, and elevate together the intelligence and the morals of 
the people. 



16 

Gentlemen — The noble heritage of liberty, like the other 
gifts of God, was granted only to them that toiled for it. He 
only who has treasured up the sighs of the bereaved and the 
groans of the oppressed can estimate the price of its purchase. 
Tongue cannot tell what our liberty cost those noble men, the 
Puritans and the Presbyterians of Scotland. They battled for 
it in the field and bled for it on the scaffold: for it they 
dwelt in the caves of the earth and the dark places of the 
wilderness ; for it they sacrificed their possessions and for- 
feited all the endearments of life ; for it they were hunted 
like beasts and poured out their blood like water upon hill- 
side and valley ; for it they lifted up their prayers from the 
clefts of the rocks and the hiding places in the hills to Him in 
whose arm they trusted for deliverance. He did deliver 
them, and these despised men set their feet upon the neck of 
kings, and laid a broad foundation for universal liberty. And 
when in after years their children renewed the struggle in 
this distant land of their refuge — they proved themselves 
worthy of their sires. With the same stern integrity, the 
same unerring sagacity, the same determination to be free, 
the same wisdom in council, and courage in the field, and 
above all, with the same unshaken reliance upon God, our 
fathers achieved their independence. They struggled on 
year after year, never desponding, never hesitating. They 
endured without complaint sufferings of which we cannot 
think without horror, and by privations and exertions new 
in the history of man, acquired that civil and religious liberty 
that we inherit. God forbid that we should think lightly of 
what has cost so much exertion, and so much pain to the 
noblest race of men the sun has looked upon. Let us value 
it as our dearest earthly treasure, and watch over it with all 
the vigilance that becomes the sons of those that earned it. 

The plant that the noble Scotchmen planted, and our fathers 
shielded with their bosoms and watered with their blood, has 
grown to be a mighty tree — stretching forth its branches to 
the east and west and north and south, it invites the oppressed 
to find refuge in its shade. We are the guardians of the tree. 
Let us take care that the roots be not divided, and that no 






17 

foreign branches be engrafted on its stock. Let every 
American feel that he is invested with the right to see that 
the republic be not endangered. Depend upon it, if we are 
true to our trust and to Him in whom our fathers trusted, it 
will not be in the power of artifice, conspiracy, nor violence 
to wrest our birthright from us. 

The present age is marked by an adroit and highly dangerous 
attempt to philosophize away all the power of revealed truth- 
Infidelity does not as formerly, boldly marshal its forces and 
rush recklessly upon the immovable bulwarks of our faith. 
We have no more to fear from the fierce assaults of unmask- 
ed scepticism ; but we are threatened by a more subtle foe. 
The pure gold of Christianity which only expanded under the 
rude hammer of ignorant violence, may readily lose all cohe- 
sion and fall to pieces, if permitted to be mingled with the 
base alloys of earth. Nothing has proved so detrimental to 
the pure and simple religion of the Bible, as its admixture 
with the miscalled philosophy of man, and perhaps since the 
early days of its propagation, it has never been more fearfully 
threatened with this unhallowed amalgamation than it is at 
present. 

[t is wonderful to observe what plain atheism and even 
downright heathenism is taught in Europe under the name 
of Christianity. Neology, transcendentalism and eclecticism 
in the garb of religion have laboured hard to pull down the 
cross. In Germany and France, a self-styled philosophy has 
to a great extent superseded the plain revelation of God, and 
built up the long exploded dogmas of the Grecian schools 
upon the ruins of the Bible. These philosophers acknowledge 
no source of illumination but their own reason. Full of 
exaggerated conceptions of their own powers, and despising 
all rational limits to investigation, they have tortured reluc- 
tant nature for evidence against God, and having run through 
mazes of absurdity where all judgment was bewildered, they 
have involved themselves in a mist of idealism in which 
Plato himself might fear to tread. Despising all the lessons 
of experience, they give themselves up to contemplate the 
phantoms of the spectral world in which they dwell. Their 
unlawful fancy reaches even to the mind of the great Invisi- 
3 



18 

ble; provides laws for the Creator, and ventures to define 
with mathematical precision, the process by which the su- 
preme cause is compelled to originate existence. It is strange 
that such absurd extravagance and daring impiety should 
attain the dignity of opinion in any land. It is more strange 
that the plague of proud and lawless speculation should so 
soon destroy in lands professedly christian, the influence of 
that faith which only can comfort the heart and satisfy the 
soul of man. Yet there are heart-sickening indications that 
our own country is to be visited with this grim philosophy. 
In one of our influential seminaries its principles have al- 
ready been promulgated. Our young men who owe all to 
the Bible, their intelligence, their dignity, their civil liberty, 
the endearments of home and the comforts of the fireside, 
they will be taught to despise the Bible ; and with contempt 
for the oracles of God, will come the abandonment to fierce 
and beastly passion ; the unbridled profligacy glorying in its 
shame; the grossness that even deifies the brute propen- 
sities — all the fruits of atheism that Germany is now reaping. 
The precocious habits of mind, so characteristic of American 
youth ; the mistaken independence of spirit that leads them 
to despise warning and reject restraint ; these prepare them 
to be the ready prey of a system that appeals fiercely to the 
pride of the soul. May God avert the threatened calamity! 
May the true and rational piety of the country rush between 
the living and the dead and stay the plague ! 

Young Gentlemen — In order to do your duty to your 
country and to the world, you. must learn and perform your 
duty to yourselves. You must turn your eye inward and 
study your own nature, and ascertain the means by which 
it may be elevated to purity. To know ourselves has long 
been considered the foundation of wisdom. Happily for us 
we have the clearest light to aid us in this inward inves- 
tigation. 

Man is a compound being : within a body so wonderfully 
made that God only can analyze and understand it, dwells a 
spirit, whose powers, little as we know of them, fill us with 
awe in the contemplation of ourselves. The curious physi- 
cal structure with all its admirable contrivances and compli- 



19 

cated mechanism, is destined to decay. Day by day it is 
dying and soon it will be resolved into dust ; but the spirit 
within is deathless as God. 

In order to the preservation of human life, certain propen- 
sities are interwoven with our animal nature. As the body is 
but the temporary dwelling-place of the spirit, these propensi- 
ties are the tools by which the house may for a time be kept 
in repair. To indulge these animal desires cannot be the end 
of our being. It is incredible that the soul was made immor- 
tal for the purpose of ornamenting and repairing a house that 
after a while must crumble away. Indeed if the mere grati- 
fication of our animal nature be the end of our being, then we 
are worse provided than the beasts of the field and the fowls 
of the air. Even the polypus, clinging to its rock, satisfies its 
wants more fully, more certainly, and with far less painful 
exertion than man can do. It is incredible that an immortal 
mind can have been made to be the slave of a mortal body. 
The body must have been made for the temporary use of the 
mind. For what use then was it made ? 

It is evident to every one that looks into the busy operations 
of his own mind, that his spirit is under restraint, and that 
it is compelled by some mysterious power to dwell in the body. 
When the spirit gazing into the glorious vault of heaven, glows 
with rapturous emotion, and longs to spurn the earth and seek 
a purer and wider sphere, the heavy body loads it down : when 
it would bring all the mighty energies of intellect to bear ve- 
hemently upon some subject of thought, the body wearies and 
the exertion cannot be long continued : when it would throw 
its glance beyond the sphere of material light, or deep into 
the hidden secrets of the earth, the eye is impotent : when 
it would commune with the kindred intelligences that throng 
the earth unseen, the dull ear conveys no etherial sounds. 
Often the quailing heart and the tottering knee, and the 
feeble muscles, refuse to do the spirit's bidding. On every 
side its action is repressed and limited. The spirit cannot 
escape the earth. It must drudge through all the petty details 
of mortal life. 

Why are these things so ? Can infidelity tell us why ? 
Can atheism explain by what irresistible power the soul is 
thus tied down to matter? Can man's philosophy unravel the 



20 

mystery of this incongruous union? And for what purpose 
are these things so ? Is there a wise end to be accomplished 
by the soul's imprisonment, or has some malignant fate confin- 
ed the spirit in this tenement of clay, that like an imprisoned 
eagle, it may restlessly spring from side to side and beat its 
wings against the bars of its cage ? Is human life but immor- 
tality in chains, or is it immortality in the cradle? 

Infidelity has no reply to make. Atheism sneers at the 
question, and bids men writhe and groan "like dumb beasts 
in pain," ignorant of all but suffering. 

Christianity only can solve the mystery. From it we learn 
that the same hand that presses down the reluctant ocean in 
its bed, and upholds the mountains in their sockets, has enclosed 
the mighty spirit in its earthen house. He placed it there 
that it might be educated and trained up for duties and enjoy- 
ments of eternal duration. To every one of us He has en- 
trusted the preparation of an immortal spirit for eternity. Its 
unalterable destiny depends upon the fidelity with which we 
perform the trust. In a few days the soul will be permitted 
to burst the walls of its shattered prison-house. Then it will 
bear with it high up to the throne of the Beneficent, or far 
away into the darkness of immortal death, a consciousness of 
identity, an entire oneness of history and interest with him 
who shall have fixed its eternal state. 

The body is intended to be the instrument by which the 
education of the soul may be effected. By it the spirit is 
brought into relation to matter, confined to place, made to 
regulate its movements by time, and brought to act upon 
material nature. We have said that the propensities are the 
tools by which the mind keeps its earthly house in tenable 
condition. Now just as by the use of tools men may be made 
acquainted with their own strength or weakness, and as by 
their use the body may be invigorated, so by the management 
of the animal propensities the mind may learn its own condi- 
tion and increase its strength. 

As we are constituted we can have no knowledge of the 
mind but by its acts. The spirit seems to have no passive 
sensation as the body has. If any organ of my body be in a 
healthy condition, I know it; it feels well. It is not so with 
the mind. I cannot judge of its health but by observing its 



21 

action in view of known rules of right. The spirit seems only 
to know itself by interpreting its own acts and thoughts which 
indeed are acts. 

Now here is the key to the mystery of human life. It is 
the intention of the Divine Being in all that through his will 
affects us here, to make us acquainted with ourselves, and to 
give us opportunity for moral education. It is, therefore, a 
capital blunder to suppose that the daily business of active life 
is opposed to the care of the mind. To retire from society in 
order to improve the heart, is to retire from school in order to 
be taught. It is true that when free from irritating causes 
men may be free from irritation, but this no more proves the 
absence of irritability, than the stillness of the sea in a calm, 
proves that its w r aters have lost the power of motion and 
could not be ruffled by the wind. 

As no man can tell what is his deficiency until he is tried, 
nor the precise quality and amount of training he requires, he 
cannot superintend his own education. To be able to do so 
would presume knowledge already perfect. He must there- 
fore submit to the arrangements of the all-wise Being. Let 
no man waste his time in vain wishes for another station, or 
other circumstances in life, in the hope that these would be 
more conducive to his moral welfare than the present. But 
let every one believe that there are lessons to be learned from 
the circumstances around him, and let him set himself dili- 
gently to acquire those lessons. 

The man who regulates his conduct by the teachings of 
true philosophy, will tread a path leading to happiness through 
laborious and persevering, yet highly exhilirating effort. To 
him no day can pass tediously. Ennui, the rust of existence, 
cannot corrode the mind thus earnestly and happily employ- 
ed. To such a man life loses all its terrors. He is neither 
intoxicated with its hopes nor troubled with its fears. Having 
no vain desire to be independent of God, he does not join in the 
common struggle for wealth. If prosperous, he seeks to em- 
ploy his means and his influence, in cultivating kindly feel- 
ings towards his fellow-men : in strengthening into habit the 
benevolent desires of his heart, by increasing the happiness 
of all around him. Should his moral nature require to be 
moulded by a sterner disciplinarian, a sharp reverse encoun- 



22 

ters him. Riches fly away; adversity undertakes his case. 
The true philosopher sees nothing in this to disturb his peace. 
He knows, as did the Israelites of old, that his God is Lord of 
the valleys as well as of the hills, and he sets himself to extract 
from poverty as much true riches as he can. Xo want of 
mere externals can make him poor. His wealth does not 
consist in flocks and herds; he does not estimate his possessions 
by gold, nor measure his worth by acres. God has wrought 
within him an imperishable store-house, and there he deposites 
his treasures. He has the true philosopher's stone, every thing 
that he touches turns to gold. Disappointment bears to him 
on her icy wing the gem that is more precious than rubies, and 
from the iron hand of affliction he takes the bitter draught 
that invigorates his soul. 

If we walk in darkness we may be continually frightened 
by strange shapes, and bewildered by illusive appearances, but 
the light shows us useful and pleasant things in the very 
objects of our terror. So in life, we may see every thing in 
disguise, and may waste our strength in alternately fleeing 
and chasing phantoms ; but by the aid of enlightened re- 
flection we may discover truth and find gratification in all 
that we encounter. 

If we differ from the brutes, it is in the faculty of reflection. 
If w r e do not use this faculty, how are we better than they? If 
we pervert it to beastly purposes how much baser are we 
than the brutes. 

If we have been created merely to perform our six days 
labour ; if the farmer is born but to till, and the laborer to 
dig, and the mechanic to construct, and the professional man 
to plod his weary round of mental pain, then of all God's 
creatures we are the most miserable, for we only are fully 
qualified to appreciate our misery. But if we are born for the 
nobler purpose of educating our spirits by coporeal endurance, 
why do we stand idle with the key to knowedge in our hands? 
Why do we not open and read the enigmas in which wisdom 
lies concealed ? 

By the talismanic power of reflection we may draw the 
elements of spiritual excellence from the veriest trifles of life. 
Man need not toil as the brute toils, finding no employment 
for his mind in the labour of his body ; but as a celebrated 



23 

man has remarked, he "may draw from the fleeting facts of 
his worldly trade, art, or profession, a science permanent as 
his immortal soul and make even these subsidiary, and prepa- 
rative of the reception of spiritual truth." 

One of the greatest hindrances to correct life is this ; that 
men suffer themselves to believe that their thoughts need no 
control. They admit that their words and actions require 
restraint, but they think that the imaginations and emotions of 
their hearts may be suffered to run riot with impunity. This 
is a fearful mistake ; it has wrought dreadful ruin. 

It is so far from true, that thoughts are of secondary impor- 
tance compared with actions, that on the contrary actions are 
virtuous or vicious, only as they are the interpreters of thought. 
The thoughts are the deeds of the soul, and by them is the 
character determined. A man's actions are but the hands on 
the dial — the important machinery all lies within. 

It is almost incredible to what extent the mind may be 
corrupted, while the outward life continues unexceptionable 
and the morals unsuspected. The grass may be green and 
the flowers may flourish, while all, beneath is rottenness. So 
the external man may wear an appearance of virtue while the 
whole spiritual man is corrupt. But this deception cannot be 
long continued. The smothered fires will at length break out, 
and then the flame is often fierce in proportion to the previous 
restraint. We often see a man who has long maintained the 
most respectable standing in society, suddenly plunge from 
apparently the highest pinnacle of virtue, into the deepest abyss 
of vice. The world astonished, wonders how one so pure 
could thus instantaneously pass over all the intermediate 
degrees of wickedness, and attain by a single act a depth of 
infamy that is usually only reached in years of progressive 
crime. The thing is easily explained. The man's mind had 
gradually been polluted. His imagination had long rioted in 
vice. The world within him had been industriously stored 
with glowing images of the forbidden fruits which he longed 
to taste, yet dared not openly enjoy. Appetite perpetually 
irritated had struggled fiercely with conscience. The moni- 
tor was overcome and gagged. The will consented, and then 
there remained nothing between the uproused passions and 
their prey. Pride, or fear, or interest, for a while restrained 



24 

open indulgence ; but in a moment of strong temptation these 
considerations gave way, and the man sprang forth a full 
grown villain at a bound. 

By far the greatest difficulty in the way of an honest man, 
who sincerely desires to accomplish the end of his being, is 
the subjection of his own thoughts. The very atmosphere is 
full of poison. Evil suggestions swarm like Pharaoh's plague 
of flies. They find their way into our closets, and infest our 
firesides, and beset us in our daily business. They are ever 
pouring upon the mind through all the avenues of sense. 
Nothing but the most immediate and determined resistance 
can prevent the seeds of evil from germinating in the heart ; 
and when they have taken root, nothing under heaven grows 
so fast. With eve?y moment's sufferance they strike their 
roots deeper and stand firmer. 

We cannot be too careful to exclude evil from our thoughts. 
The man who for a single moment cherishes a foul sugges- 
tion, 'plants it. 

Young Gentlemen — Never permit yourself to think, that 
which it would be shameful for you to speak ; never suffer 
your fancy to dwell upon deeds you would scorn to do. If 
there were no other danger in such license there is tins, that 
you can never obliterate from your memory the thoughts you 
have once indulged. You may forget them; but passing 
events as they breathe upon the tablet of memory, will again 
and again painfully revive the long forgotten lines of thought. 
Perception and fancy are the cameras obscuras of the mind ; 
they are ever presenting images which the first consent of the 
will daguerreotypes upon the recollection. Permit me to 
make one rem re. 

The first discovery a man makes when heattemptsto regulate 
his thoughts and outward conduct upon the principles we have 
inculcated, is- that his mind is unequal to the task. He finds 
his moral nature in ruins and as utterly unable to renovate 
itself as is the fallen temple to rear up its prostrate pillars, or 
reconstruct its broken arch. If he endeavours to strengthen 
his palsied energies by external associations, they bring but 
little aid— and he must mourn hopelessly over the desolation 
of his immortal mind, until he seeks from the God that made 
it, the power of renovation. 



